Archive for the ‘Canada’ Category

The honour of a devoted heart now beating with hope now trembling with anxiety is offered to you – is yours. Reject it; scorn it, it is yours – I do not write to tell you that I can love you that I wish to love you that I ask the privilege to love you, I write simply to tell you that I do love you and that which a passion so ardent a feeling so profound that in spite of all the obstacles which interpose, I have been compelled to venture this declaration.

To say that you are beautiful, graceful, accomplished – that you are fair and lovely – that you are admirable in all that makes women admired is but to echo the words or embody the thoughts of all around you – All acknowledge your attractions but I feel them and I cannot be so false to my own heart as to conceal the emotions from the object to which they tend.

Lady my position is humble but not so are my aspirations and my hopes for I have dared to love you – I have not the gift of fortune yet I am seeking what the wealth of the universe could purchase from me – Your love let it be still as it has been the bright star of my destiny. Let it be the goal of my ambition and you shall see how bravely I will endeavor to deserve what I will aspire to the favour that can give unbounded happiness to.

Your devoted admirer

James Johnston

They were married eight months later.

James hand wrote this himself, in startlingly good penmanship. The letter is frequently on display at [Upper Canada Village](http://www.uppercanadavillage.com/home.htm) — ‘Upper Canada’ is an old name for the province of Ontario Canada.

They were my great-great-great-grandparents (maybe another great in there). I have no real information beyond that, other than, I suppose, they had at least one child :-)

Arar was looking for some information and maybe a bit of justice. Guess he’ll have to look someplace else. His case against the US government has been thrown out.

This doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t think I like this at all.

Arar is a Canadian Citizen. His crime was to fly someplace with a stop-over in the US. His punishment was to be ‘rendered’ to Syria where he was tortured for about a year. Nobody disputes these facts. Its just that nobody wants to admit being involved. The US did it. Canada did nothing about it. Well, maybe whine politely ‘That’s not nice’ (and I think that’s stretching things to give Canada, my country, even that much credit — complicit is beginning to look like a word we’ll have to live with). This isn’t the first time Canada has done itself proud defending Canadians from torture and execution.

But there’s a point to be made about the type of highly confidential data that can be obtained by anyone with an Internet connection and a credit card, and Stoddart has the misfortune of being the perfect illustration. Not that she’s pleased about it. Her eyes widen as she recognizes what has just been dropped on the conference table in her downtown Ottawa office — detailed lists of the phone calls made from her Montreal home, Eastern Townships’ chalet, and to and from her government-issued BlackBerry cellphone.

A local Florida TV station decided to do an investigation into this kind of thing and discovered that some websites will sell the last 100 phone numbers you may have dialed to anyone who has your phone number already. Sites like [find the company name for yourself] sells these private numbers for $100.

There is nothing that I can add to what’s going through your head right now.

I’m an exAlian. I did my time at Alias between 1991 and, technically, 1996, but really 1994. I was “Director, Product Development” — no matter what it sounds like, this was a technical position. A great job at a great company with great people.